When Things Become Too Much

I've been a bit stressed lately.  I have a bad tendency to get involved in things too much, where I try and do everything for everyone and belatedly realize I'm up to my forehead in stress and a hairs breath away from a massive breakdown.  I volunteer a lot, I know most of you know that and while I do enjoy helping, sometimes it becomes too much.  I'm either at the school or the hospital every day and that includes the weekends.  I do field trips throughout the weeks this month with the kids every day I'm not at the hospital, which is Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.  On the weekends I work at the school fundraiser that's happening this month, sometimes all day from 10:30am - 9:30pm.  I realized last night, as I was going to bed at 8 something because I was so exhausted that I'm spent.  I woke up this morning, looked at my house and had a panic attack (I'm a wee bit obsessive about my house, it doesn't have to be perfect, but clean is good).  My daughter and my husband helped me get everything in order.  I adopted a stray cat that was in a parking lot who was very hungry and flea infested, when I went to lunch last week too, which is odd, because I hate litter boxes, but he's sweet and he loves me and I'm keeping him.  At any rate, in order to not break down again I meditated and decided to think about all the things that make me smile.  Here is a short list:  

My friends (you know who you are and I love you)

Nora's laugh

My husband's kisses

Simon & Midas (pets)

Yoga or a run

Pumpkin spice coffee

*takes a sip of pumpkin spice coffee*  See?  Bliss.  Be well.

SIMON ROBERT H.

Shell's Life

I apologize, I'm running on very little sleep again, so if this post sounds as if it has been written by a three yr old that's why, or at least that's the excuse I'm using!


My daughter has asthma, seasonal allergies and eczema.  Apparently they generally come in threes and she was blessed with them all.  Hopefully she'll out grow them and the eczema isn't too bad, although that may be because I lather her up with loads of cream as soon as she gets out of the bath everyday.  At least she's good about it, she now just grabs her towel, throws it on the bed and lays on top of it as if to say, "I know we're doing the whole grease monkey thing, so let's just get on with it."  Her allergies this week have been atrocious though and neither of us got much sleep at all last night.  She gets drainage (yeah, gross) when she lays down at night, which causes her to cough, which last night caused her to vomit.  Ah, the joys.  I ended up sleeping in her bed with her, which let me tell you, sharing the bed with a 5 yr old is like wrestling a live octopus.  Lord.


So, moving along with the rest of the life of Shell.  I know, you're all anxiously waiting on the edges of your seats to know what I've been up to for the last week.  Well, Nora began kindergarten in August.  I am now the "Room Mom" for her class.  Yeah, I don't know exactly what that means either, but her teacher sent me a note saying she put me down for it and if I could please go to the meeting, which I did and then ended up as the Volunteer Coordinator for the PTO, as well.  *shakes head*  Today at some point, I'm going in to the Associate Health Clinic of the hospital here and getting my TB skin test done, which I'm guessing takes an entire minute to do, turning in my immunization records and then I'll have a short orientation and should be good to go to begin volunteering there on Mondays and Wednesdays.